Rich Crooks/Chapter 9

HEN came one of those disagreeable surprizes that are sometimes called bolts out of a clear sky, though the sky had not, as one may judge from what has been told, seemed so very clear. Anyway, pretty much of the whole affair got into the newspapers, and on top of that Joseph Cornwall appeared to have tried to get security from Ellis by telling him that I had been known as Smithers in Salt Lake.

Ellis probably believed he had more reason to be jealous of me than of Joseph Cornwall and Ellis had no way of knowing at all that I had done him a bit of a service—or maybe that old scoundrel of a Joseph Cornwall had thought that by forcing Ellis' attention on me he would cause me to dispose of him.

I knew this had happened, because Ellis wrote me a very abusive letter saying he had found out that I was Smithers; that he didn't care how bad my reputation was as a gunman, he would get me and he wanted me to know it; that I would pay for having done Daniel Cornwall's dirty work.

It seems to be a very stupid characteristic of almost everybody bent on relieving a grudge, to send a warning—an abusive warning. I don't know why it is so but it is. I suppose it is related to the passion for abusing an enemy that is so marked in savages.

The only thing about the letter that gave me a second's pause—and it was a rather long letter, full of abuse and some illumination as to how he had discovered who I was—was the accusation that I had done Daniel Cornwall's dirty work. I supposed that Joseph had added that lie to draw Ellis' lightning more inevitably upon my head.

I was more irritated by the newspapers than by anything else. Jack, in a moment of idiocy, had let the reporters get the best of him. True enough, those fellows are likely to get the best of anybody, and it is no trick at all for a pack of them, sharp-eyed, wily-tongued, lightning-witted, to turn a young, emotional lover inside out. They had got him to talk about Cora. I won't say that he had sense enough not to tell them what she had heard when the Cornwalls had quarreled. He probably forgot that completely at the time. He told them pretty much everything else. He said that Cora's room had evidently been robbed in an effort to secure the little box of important papers which she had previously turned over to him and he had returned to the Cornwalls. No, he did not know what the box contained. He—the idiot—told of Cora's father and her semi-adoption by the millionaire Joseph Cornwall.

The newspapers flared. Joseph Cornwall denied having received the box. The papers clamored to know what was in it and speculated in headlines. The recent murder, or suicide, of Daniel was rehashed. By a system of elimination and deduction they concluded that I had the box. They were encouraged to this conviction by Joseph Cornwall, who seemed to have lost his own head too. I was always good copy.

All in all, it was a whale of a story. I was pestered for a statement but I said nothing. Long dispatches from Salt Lake added sensational information to the local stories. It was a muddle and a mess, and those hounds of the press left no stones unturned. I put on my best poker-face and let them guess what ever they would.

I did succeed in impressing upon Jack that he had made a fool of himself. I also told him that if he so much as breathed a word of what Cora had told him and me of why she fled the Cornwalls, I would see to it that she never did marry him in case, as as unlikely, she ever forgave him herself.

The papers were frantic to discover that point but they did not succeed. It was one matter upon which Joseph was equally desirous of silence. I gave out nothing to papers or to the police, and though the latter rather looked askance at me they did not make any formal inquiries. Joseph evidently did not want to take legal steps to recover the box and its contents, though he was now sure I was a liar since, for fear I might give the documents publicity, I had told him I had no papers of his, his brother's or of Walsh's. That would hit Walsh hardest, it is true, but it would also cause Walsh, Samson-like, to pull down the Cornwall reputation, if not even to do violence to Joseph himself.

I did not say anything to the newspapers or to the police even when Yang Li, the mute Chinaman who attended to the rather large apartment Jack and I shared, was knocked unconscious while answering a call at the door. Again that blow over the head—the same that had killed Mrs. Ellis, nearly killed Cora and, glancing a bit, narrowly spared Yang from more than a severe bump. True, three different men could have struck as many different blows, but it looked much as if some one was putting his trust in a club.

My rooms were searched. Had the party who invaded the apartment looked into the dictionary, which I had carefully hollowed out, he might have been satisfied, though I doubt it. Anyway he would have found the little black steel box just as I had received it.

On the same day I received a telegram from the secretary to the Governor of Utah. The governor had evidently been reading the papers and New York dispatches. The telegram requested me to meet the governor at such-and-such a hotel thirty minutes after his train arrived on the following Thursday.

Even I, who have had some experience in the ways of the world and its troubles, was beginning to feel a little bewildered at the rapidity with which complications were developing.